Creating a working stylesheet may seem like an end in itself, but once it’s written you may want it to run faster or you may not be sure that the output is correct (And if you are sure, how sure are you?).

Profilers, unit test frameworks, and other tools of conventional programming are similarly available for XSLT but are not widely used. This presentation surveys the available tools for ensuring the quality of your XSLT.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution when looking for tools. For example, if you are using Saxon and Ant, then you are looking for a different set of tools than if you are using libXSLT and Makefiles.

This presentation covers XSLT-specific tools and techniques. It does not at this point propose to cover general XML tools and techniques such as schema validation or Schematron: they are of course useful, and could be added, but XSLT tools provide plenty to cover in a single timeslot.